


wear flowers in your hair

by a_nybodys



Series: this is dedicated to the one i love [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: (kinda), Canonical Character Death, Dave & Klaus Hargreeves During Vietnam, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:42:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23525569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_nybodys/pseuds/a_nybodys
Summary: They were supposed to go to California.
Relationships: Dave/Klaus Hargreeves
Series: this is dedicated to the one i love [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1692919
Comments: 14
Kudos: 43





	wear flowers in your hair

They were supposed to go to California.

On rainy nights, when they had volunteered to take watch as an excuse to get as close as possible, knees knocking and arm hair brushing, they would outline their plans. Dave would lean close, impossibly close, and murmur, only for Klaus’ ears, and Klaus would look over at him, big kohl-lined green eyes impossibly wide, like he wasn’t used to even the slightest bit of love. 

They would go to California, Dave would begin, and Klaus would clarify. San Francisco, he would insist, and Dave would grin and nod along, willing to go anywhere and do anything for Klaus. Klaus had the better imagination of the two, probably the better imagination of anyone in the squad, and he would detail elaborate fantasies that would make Dave’s heartbeat seize and skip like the old Ella and Louis records his mama kept in a beat-up old cardboard box under the record player. He would talk about a little, but not too small, apartment, walls painted cornflower blues and sunshine yellows, and would mention, offhand and deprecating, how he could paint little designs all over them. Klaus would never show him his art, but from the understated references, Dave gathered that he was pretty damn good. Klaus had promised to show him once they got out, and Dave couldn’t wait. He wanted to know every facet of Klaus, every little detail that made him who he was. 

Who he was was beautiful. When it was day, and the Sky Soldiers were eating, or rolling a joint and passing it around, Klaus would laugh, limbs loose and smile giddy, and Dave couldn’t take his eyes off of his lips, his sparkling eyes. Klaus would turn, suddenly, and catch Dave staring, and would smirk. And when they were alone, Klaus would rattle on about anything he could think of to take his mind off of whatever he saw in the dark corners of camp, but god the things he could talk about. He would say facts about the stars that Dave couldn’t even comprehend, could talk about twenty-one different ways to disarm someone taller and stronger than you, he could speak six languages. Every fact he let slip made Dave fall a little bit more in love.

They were supposed to move to California.

Dave let it slip one night, as they huddled under a flap of the tent, and Dave convinced himself it was only thunder that shook the sky. They were talking about travel, and Dave had told Klaus that the first time he had left his homestate of Texas was when he was drafted. Klaus had looked at him, big doe eyes somehow even wider than before, and he had leaned in. Dave could smell him, smell the mud, the rain, and his sweat, and he breathed in, wanting to commit it to memory.

“I’m gonna show you the world, David Katz.”

Dave knew that he was lost, that he would never love anyone quite like he loved Klaus.

And then, after the bar, in a cheap motel room Dave told him, gasping it into his chest, and Klaus groaned like he had been injured. In the silence that followed, Klaus seemed lost, his gaze unfocused and his muscles stiff. Dave combed a hand through his curls, unknotting the week-old tangles, and he sang. Leah, his older sister of six years, told him every chance she could that his voice sounded like a dog that had gotten hit by an old Chevy, but his mama would take him aside after, and she would whisper in his hair to never stop singing. So Dave sang. 

The month before he was drafted, he had splurged and bought a record. It had been a few years old by that point, but Dave had been eyeing it every time he passed the record shop on his way home from the diner he worked at. It was “This Precious Time” by The Mamas & The Papas and he had nearly worn it out within the first week of him owning it. His mama, when the news came, had played it the night he set off, and she had held him in her arms and sang the words into his hair as he cried.

Dave had done the same for Klaus, hoping that he was helping him through wherever he was in his head. Soon enough, Klaus had come back and, propping his chin on Dave’s sternum, had looked at him, eyes half-lidded.

“Would you like to go to California?”

Dave stopped, question halfway to his lips, before realizing that he had been singing “California Dreamin’”.

“I would love to.”

And that’s how it started. Klaus would talk, ramble for hours about what they would do in San Francisco. Klaus would work in a record shop, or maybe a thrift shop or maybe both, decisions weren’t his forte. And Dave would chime in that he would want to own a little flower shop, and Klaus would smile, eyes crinkling at the corners. They would have a dog and a cat, Klaus had said, because he could never decide whether he was a dog or cat person, and Dave had named them Effie and Augustus, respectively. They would have a record player, shoved into the corner of the living room, right next to the old-fashioned couch, and they would have so many albums that they would fill three bookshelves. They would hang white string lights around the house, Dave knew that Klaus hated the dark, and would buy out the block of funny-looking lamps. Their bedroom would be cozy, blankets and pillows piled like mountains on the bed, tapestries hung from the walls and a radio, humming tunes all night. California would be warm, so they would leave the window open to hear the passing cars, the people talking on the street below. Silence wouldn’t be an option, not after they left this hellhole. The lights would continue there, though only a small one would need to be on, the city lights shining through the open window enough of a distraction to get by. 

A few months after their first night in Saigon, on a night that was as humid as it was loud, Klaus leaned in to Dave and asked if they would get rings. Dave had laced their fingers together, calming the shaking tendons in Klaus’ bony hands, and had described exactly what their rings would look like. Dave would get Klaus an antique ring, something old and ornate, but understated. In highschool, Dave had done a project for history class about Victorian memento mori rings, and Dave told Klaus that one would fit his gothic sensibilities, and Klaus had huffed a laugh into his shoulder, wet with sweat and fog. It would be wrought gold, thin, and have a coffin shaped diamond in the center, nothing too big, a flower shop doesn’t pay too well and they had rent to pay. Klaus had swallowed, thick and heavy, and had said that he would get Dave something beautiful. It would be a thick band, and silver to match his eyes, and he would engrave it himself. When Dave had asked what he would engrave it with, Klaus had smiled and told him he would just have to wait and find out.

On nights where they were crouched, behind sandbags and under the screams of bullets overhead, Dave would hold Klaus’ hand, and would write words on his palm. Both of them only actually used their guns when they had to, neither of them had wanted to be there and neither wanted the weight of killing someone on their conscience. So they crouched, as far from the front lines as possible, and Klaus would stare, eyes seeing something far beyond the mud of the jungle, and Dave would write him poems into his hands, right over the tattoos that reminded Dave so much of a Beatles song. He would write of their apartment, of Effie and Augustus, of their record player and their walls, painted with all of Klaus’ imagination. He would write about their rings, and he would trace where they would go. Klaus usually never came back until they were on the bus, but when they had R&R, Klaus would continue his poems into the sweaty skin of Dave’s back.

And then Dave got shot.

They had been caught by the captain last time, not shooting as far from the action as they could get, and he had threatened them with prison time if they didn’t get to the front lines and shoot. So they did, and the sparks of gunfire, the sound of bullets were too much, but Klaus was a livewire, chattering up a storm, talking to himself, to Dave, to anyone he could. Dave would’ve grabbed his hands if he could, and he was going to when he felt all the wind rush out of his lungs. He didn’t process the pain until Klaus had turned him over. Dave had stared up then, memorizing every inch of Klaus’ face, of his big green eyes, of the tears that made streaks through the grime on his cheeks. He wanted to brush them away, wanted to kiss them clean, wanted to sing a song into his hair. It would cheer him up, his brain supplied, he loves to hear you sing. And he faded away, not to the sound of gunshots or Klaus screaming, but to the sound of a record scratching and a voice singing about a gray sky and brown leaves.

They were supposed to go to California.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't stop thinking about them, and if the writers won't give Dave a personality, then I will.


End file.
